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We thank you for your story on Ron Paul.  There are many of us in the United States who support him and it is good to see that he has the attention of the international community as well.

... He’s the only Republican candidate who wants to end U.S. involvement in Iraq and withdraw the U.S. Navy from the waters off the Iranian coast.

He wants America to pull out of the United Nations, NATO, the International Criminal Court, and most international trade agreements.

He wants to abolish FEMA, end the federal war on drugs, get rid of the Department of Homeland Security, send the U.S. military to guard the Mexican border, stop federal prosecutions of obscenity, eliminate the IRS, end most foreign aid, overturn the Patriot Act, phase out Social Security, revoke public services for illegal immigrants, repeal No Child Left Behind, and reestablish gold and silver as legal tender.

“To maintain our current account deficit we borrow almost $3 billion a day,” he tells me. “It’s unsustainable. It will end. And it’s going to end in a worse fashion than it did in 1979 and 1980, when interest rates went to 21 percent.”

... His name is among the most searched terms on Technorati, the blog search engine. Before his appearance on Maher’s show, online activists used the Web site Eventful.com to organize an impromptu rally for him outside the studio.

(his history) ... Then came the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Two weeks later, Paul took to the House floor to advocate a complete reexamination of American foreign policy. “An economic issue does exist in this war,” he told the House on Sept. 25. “Oil!” By Paul’s reading of history, the rise of Islamic fundamentalists who targeted America resulted from U.S. interventionist policies in the Middle East. He was also one of the first to warn about expansions of federal power in the name of war. “The heat of the moment has prompted calls by some of our officials for great sacrifice of our liberties and privacy,” he said. “This poses a great danger to our way of life.”

At the time, such pronouncements were unpopular, even to many on Paul’s own staff…

But Paul stuck to his guns as the debate turned to Iraq. Before the invasion, he raised questions about evidence that Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction. He publicly mocked the idea of creating a functioning democracy in Iraq. He rejected the principle of preemptive war. He also opposed the Patriot Act. He attacked the Bush administration for abandoning habeas corpus, authorizing harsh interrogation and permitting warrantless wiretaps. He opposed federalizing Transportation Security Administration workers to guard air travel. He was blunt, forceful and not always politically sensitive…

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/06/02/ron_paul/?source=whitelist